It is still rather warm in Istanbul. 22C by day. It has snowed somewhere. Or so I hear from my sister who’s very close to the Russian-Finnish border these days. I am not sure what’s the snow outlook for Istanbul this year. But I know it will get colder here in a few weeks too. And I will start baking.
This baking season I have decided to go beyond selfish cravings for moist chocolate cakes and upside down cakes. Who needs another recipe for those really? Instead I am going to introduce you to more of Turkish baking - from Istanbul pastry shops, from regular Turkish homes, from my frivolous baking dreams. Join my Turkish baking quest and win a set of fantastic cooking condiments you can bake with (and not only!) from Istanbul!
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Tarhana, sourdough turned into an “instant” soup has boggled my mind since the very first time I saw it. Mother of my then Turkish boyfriend bought some from a store of home-made foods during our visit to Beypazarı, a little town with its center set up to give dwellers of the nearby places (such as Ankara where we came from) a feel of visiting an idyllic village where locals have nothing else to do but interacting with the visitors and feeding them with assorted fruits of their varied labors. Home made jams, dried vegetables, longest and thinnest stuffed wine leaves I have ever seen, double-baked Beypazarı kurusu - Turkish take on biscotti, dry type of baklava, homemade dried pasta and then tarhana.
We bought some of those delights including a bag of fine coral color grains which - as I was explained - was kind of a dry tomato soup and was meant to travel with me to Moscow. With the recipe from one of those websites that adapt Turkish recipes for foreigners so thoroughly that most the of time I don’t recognize the original any more I got the directions which I followed. I combined water and that ground tomato soup and was stirring it and stirring as it simmered. Eventually I served a rather uninspiring muddy soup.
Little I knew about the real tarhana and a proper way to cook it. Things clearned when I met my prospective mother-in-law who became my guide into the depths of Turkish home cooking including its heights such as making tarhana. Tarhana is often translated as “sour dough soup” which kind of gives you a hint of the process - the dough is left to ferment for a while. But then how the dought is made, what goes inside and what happens after were a miracle to me. Until a rather epic process of the making was staged at our countryside kitchen in Sapanca.
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This fall in Istanbul we are crazy about bonito (palamut). As other migratory fish (moving from colder Black Sea to the warmer Sea of Marmara- inevitably through the Bosphorus) is has always been one the most favorite fishes eaten in Istanbul. In fact so favorite and so important that bonito was depicted on some Byzantine coins. And this year sounds very much like those prehistoric times when abundant fish in Istanbul could be caught by hands or baskets.
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Turkish coffee is majorly misunderstood, I find. No, there is no such thing as Turkish coffee beans - they have never been grown in this country. No, you don’t add milk to your Turkish coffee. And no, that muddy beverage you had somewhere else is not a typical Turkish coffee. I have already put my 5 cents into the cause of educating people about Turkish coffee by providing a useful list of places where one can go for a decent cup in Istanbul. But even the right cup of coffee can be treated wrong way so today I’d like to share a few tips that will help you enjoy Turkish coffee the way locals do.
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‘Have you been to a culinary school?‘ - customers of my Istanbul cooking classes and food tours often ask. Maybe it is my enthusiasm about cooking, maybe the nature of what I am doing or (dare I assume) my dazzling expertise in the domain which makes them think I should have been through a rigorous training. My answer disappoints but even more so - puzzles: I have not gone to a culinary school and got a completely different kind of education at a business school. And then worked as a strategy consultant which may look even more irrelevant to the cooking arts but in fact makes up for a very useful background to run a kitchen.
But then there is somebody I know who went to a culinary school. A young cousin of my husband. When he comes to help at our restaurant kitchen in Sapanca I learn tremendous lot from him. Because as a former consultant you sure know how to benefit from the education someone else has got. So enter my young Turkish cousin Ömer and 5 lessons from the culinary school (he has gone to and I have learned from).
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We started getting busy at Zelis Ciftligi in Sapanca on Friday. Shopping at the Friday market, serving dinner, doing prep for the Saturday morning baking and prep for the meze we would be serving on the weekend. Then the weekend when my day kicked off with 7 am baking, orchestrating the buffet preparation, then making staff lunch, then mid-term cleaning, skyping with my sister and parents, prep for dinner, serving dinner, cleaning up and closing down around 11 pm. On Sunday when I brought to anne - still in quarantine after her cancer treatment - a piece of wonderfully moist chocolate cake I baked that morning she said, “This is the first time I left the kitchen for so long and I am so relaxed”. And I have never been more exhausted.
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“Any new kitchen scars?” he asks me as I enter his shop. “No”, I burst into laugh. “Enough of the old wounds that are still healing”, I refer to the piece of flash I chopped off my index finger and 10 cm burn on my arm. When he asked about the finger a week ago and I explained the matter he replied with satisfaction, “You are learning!” And then added, “I have burned myself a lot”. Just like my horse-riding coach with a shining smile congratulated me when I fell from a galloping horse. True masters know that we learn best when we fail. And so with little chats we get to know each other better and our bond grows with a true master - my favorite pide maker in Istanbul.
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